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Build your Tutor Website – Setting up Hosting – Install WordPress

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Been a crazy week here – one of those that I just want to forget. Tonight will make five funeral visitations that I’ve had in two weeks. Thankfully no immediate family, but a reminder that life is short so we should take advantage of every day.

We’re continuing our series on building your website. Today we’re going to buy hosting and install wordpress.

Below is the first video –

  1. Log into Godaddy.
  2. Find where you change the DNS.
  3. Purchase hosting (if you haven’t yet) – the host we use is http://www.bluehost.com/track/blitzpromo/
  4. Find out the DNS numbers you’re going to input in Godaddy. If you use Bluehost they are currently –
    DREAMHOST.COM           66.33.206.206
    NS2.DREAMHOST.COM           208.97.182.10
    NS3.DREAMHOST.COM           66.33.216.216
  5. Wait a half hour or so. Check to see if your domain is live.

 

The second video is for installing wordpress.

Just follow the instructions. Remember if you have a different host – then do a search if they don’t give clear inst

Finding Tutor Students – Back to School Ideas to increase your business

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Finding Tutor Students

Finding Tutor Students – Back to School

Summer is speeding by; pretty soon schools will be opening again. I thought about talking today about building a website, but I think I’ll do that as part of the weekly postings on our blog. Some of you have been asking some questions, so I thought I would answer those.

At the end of this issue is a list of articles / newsletters that you might have missed.

Next issues will be July 23rd and August 13th but we’ll be posting on our blogs most Thursdays.

100 Ways to Find tutor students continues –

  1. Finding your ideal tutor student – If you could choose anyone to be your student who would it be? I know that sounds odd, but do it, think if you could have anyone be your student. What would be their characteristics. Here’s an example – using the example we’ve used in the past. We’re a Math tutor, we tutor all math subjects in high school.

My ideal candidate would just be entering high school – that way we could serve them longer.
They would obviously need some help in math, or they could just excel at Math and want some help making a perfect Math score on the ACT.

Side Note – I know as tutors many times we focus on tutoring students that need help in a subject. Why not tutor gifted and talented students. Don’t call it tutoring, call it mentoring or something like that. There isn’t as much of a need, but they are out there.

The student’s family would be middle class.
We would be tutoring them at my house so they would need to live close.
They would listen to everything that I said and would do all the assignments I gave them without complaining.

So why did we do that exercise. If you know who your perfect student would be, you’ll be able to find them much easier. Since I know I want them just entering high school, I need to prepare for that. I should have held some free classes at the end of the eighth grade, telling them what they’ll be learning in highschool and give them a list of things that will help make the transition easier (attending my Math Summer Boot Camp would be one of them).

We always love to help, so if you have some notes about your ‘best’ student, but don’t know how that would help you find them, let us know and we’ll be more than happy to help.

  1. How much is a tutor student worth –

Knowing how much a student is worth can help you figure out how much you can spend on advertising. If you’ve been in business for awhile, it is pretty easy. Don’t worry though, if you’re just starting out then we can do some estimations.

How long on average do your students stay with you (a year, two, three, more)?
How many tutor sessions do most of your students attend each year?
How much did they pay per session?

My students stay on average 2.5 years.
40 sessions / year
$20 / session

2.5 x 40 x $20 = $2000.00

If you’re just starting.

Look at your calendar. I like to estimate 2 times a week for tutoring a student. If they need extra help, then it could be three or even four times a week. So we’ll just say 2 times a week. 8 months of tutoring, four weeks in each month.

We want to guess the low end for how many years, so we’ll just say one. We’ll also guess $25 / tutor session.

8 x 4 = 32 (number of weeks tutored) x 2 = 64 x $25 = $1600.00

$2000 and $1600 – so what can we use those numbers for. We can spend 10 or 20 percent of that value to get a tutor student. We talked about facebook ads a week or so ago, we could spend $150 – $200 to get one student and we would still make a profit. Please reread the last sentence again. When we do consulting for tutor businesses, sometimes they complain about spending money on advertising, until we work out the numbers.

By the way, if you followed our advertising guide for facebook and you spent the limit and didn’t get a student, please contact us and we’ll be happy to check out your ad and how you’ve set it up (no charge).

 

Back to school ideas –

  1. A class – Create an hour long lecture / class for back to school. We’ve talked about creating one before, but this one will be focused on returning to school. Create a brochure for the class. Make sure you list the benefits for attending the class. Here is an example –

Math Back to School Bash

The 2nd annual Math Back to School Bash will be held on Weds. Night August 5th from 6-8pm at the library.

If you’re going to be attending high school this year, we’ll be focusing on some things you’ll want to review. There will be free notebooks filled with math tips and all 9th and 10th grade student who attend will be entered to win 3 free months of tutoring. Refreshements will be served and parents you’ll be encouraged to come too.

Reservations are suggested, we have room for 20 students and the space fills up fast.

Call or email us for details and to reserve your spot.

While you’re giving the class, get someone to video tape you while you’re doing it.

  1. Create a notebook – the one we’re going to give away. Buy a note book, create five or ten printouts. One of them should provide details for your tutoring service and how you can help them get an A in the subject.

Add a brochure and give a stack of them to

  1. Camps – those that cater to your students. A good idea is to sponsor an educational camp, but you can do that next year.
  2. Festivals – there are many during the summer time. Find someone with a booth, give them a stack of your notebooks to hand out.
  3. Shopping – think about where students will be shopping for back to school. Take some notebooks there.

Using our how much is a student worth, we could buy a hundred notebooks, if one student joins us, we would have made a profit.

 

The Tutor promotion series –

100 ways to find more tutor students (Part 1)

100 Ways to Find Students (Part 2)

More ways to find tutor students part 3

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/100-ways-to-promote-your-tutor-business-21-23-building-a-facebook-page/

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/finding-tutor-students-part-5-using-facebook/

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/facebook-advertising-finding-local-tutor-clients-easily/

 

 

We hope you’re having a wonderful summer!

Follow us / more information.

You can find much more information on our blog. Just use the search box and type something in, you may be surprised at what you find.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/

or find us on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Clever-Apple-Tutoring-Business-Help/186004714761452?ref=hl

100 Ways to Promote your Tutor Business (21- 23 ) Building a Facebook Page

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As you grow your tutor business, a great way to get new customers and communicate with your current students is to create some kind of web presence.

21. Today we’ll talk about creating a Facebook page, we’ve already discussed this in a post – you can find it at the following link.

Facebook changes the way things are done frequently, but creating the page is still nearly the same. If you have questions about doing it you can send us an email.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/facebook-business-pages-and-follow-ups/

After you’ve set up your business page, you’ll notice that you don’t have any followers. Don’t worry that is how everyone starts, at the bottom.

  1. Announce your new business page on your personal feed.
  2. Let your current students know that you have a facebook page.
  3. Message individuals that you think might be interested in your FB page. Please note don’t send a note to everyone or soon you will find you’ve been labeled a spammer. Pretend I have a good relationship with a guidance counselor. We’ve talked several times over the past school year, she’s sent a couple of students to us, that would be a good person to message. A guidance counselor that you have had no communication with, would not be someone to message (just use your common sense).

22. We’ll talk more about posting later but for now try and post something everyday. Make a simple schedule. Again pretending I’m tutoring math.

M – Math skills
T – links to cool math sites on the internet.
W – Formulas you want to learn
R – Local events
F- post something about your business.

You’ll notice that only once a week (or less) you want to post something about your business. Too much selling will drive potential customers away.

23. Post the video that you made showcasing your presentation.

Save some money this week – next week we’ll tell you how to spend it.

Enjoy your week.

More ways to find tutor students part 3

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We continue with some more ways to promote your tutor business, up to 15.

12. Email signatures – sounds simple, but it works. Make it short and simple and include a coupon.

Tim Hamblin
Register for a free summer tutor session. We guarantee to help you make above a 25 on your ACT. Use coupon My Summer Fun.
Visit our website (use a special url) or call us @ (your phone number).

When you check out your analytics pay attention to your signature pages.

  1. We talked some about talking to teachers and guidance counselors last time. There are some more people that you can ‘talk to.” Here are some things that you’ll want to make sure to do.

Give them a business card.
Make friends with them before you approach them about business. The better they ‘know’ you, the more likely they will be to recommend you.
Do something nice for them.
Give them additional business cards – offer them something for referring people to you. We talk some about affiliate programs, later.

I will be listing some of the folks that you’ll want to talk to, think about whatever you’re tutoring and think about people that your students might come into contact with. So while we list some folks for school related tutoring you can come up with your own list. You’re tutoring Guitar, go to the music stores and become friends with the owners.

People you want to contact Librarian (both your cities library and the school).
14. Local merchants – think of where your students shop or hang out.
15. Sunday school teachers.

 

 

Next week is our newsletter and we’ll talk about creating a presentation. We might even have a video if we have time.

Ideas for Product 3

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Continuing with the product creation series.

Product 3 – Creation tips

Some Reminders about Product 3

Product 3 – Recurring income product. This product contains something extra and generates a monthly income of between $19 and $49.

Product 3 – you’ll reinvest half of that back into advertising.

Recurring income is pretty awesome. Let’s do some numbers so you get an idea.

Say you are selling a product for $20.00. Each month you get two new students. One keeps going every month.

Month 1 – $40 +
Month 2 – $40 + $20 = $60
Month 3 $40 + $40  = $80
Month 4 – $40 + $60  = $100
Month 5 – $40 + $80 = $120
Month 6- $40 + $100 = $140
Month 7 – $40 + $120 = $160
Month 8- $40 + $140 = $180
Month 9 – $40 + $160 = $200
Month 10 $40 + $180 = $220
Month 11 -  $40 + $200 = $240
Month 12 – $40 + $220 = $260

Total for the year – $1760
Imagine if you got ten new subs each month – you can add a zero on those numbers.

When coming up with a product, think of something that people will need ongoing help with. A great thing that has worked for many of our clients is study sessions, these could be done in the evenings or the weekends, whichever is more convenient for you.

The best way I’ve found to do this is with online tutoring. An easy way to do it is with Google Hangouts although there are many different ways you can do it.

Next week we’ll give you details for how you can create things like, pdfs, videos and live broadcasts. Till then I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

 

Products for your Tutor Business

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News – Hope you had some wonderful time off and are ready to get back to work. We’re working on Week four of our online tutor guide and I thought I would share some things with you about creating products for your business. Even if the only thing you’ve done so far in your business is tutor students, it doesn’t hurt to have some additional income streams. A reminder if you would like to order our tutor guide you can find it at the following url.

http://www.cleverapple.com/onlinetutoringguide2.html

If you sign up for the free seven week trial you’ll get a coupon for $100 / off.

Next issues will Jan.22nd .

Product Creation 101

We’ve talked quite a bit in the previous weeks about creating products and you should have some pretty good ideas about how that you’re going to earn money with the web site we created for you. I have used the following approach for products with several of my businesses and it has worked. If you look at the NCLEX case study, you can see how we’re going to use it in the ‘test’ business.

You want to create three different products.

An entry level product – this product is priced below $100. You want to provide the customer with exceptional value so that they purchase the second and third product.

Product 2 – Priced between $199 and $499 – this expands on the entry level product.

Product 3 – Recurring income product. This product contains something extra and generates a monthly income of between $19 and $49.

I won’t go into why you want to create a product, when really what you’re selling is a service (tutoring), but one of the big reasons is that you can create a product once and then sell it hundreds (or thousands) of times.

Product 1 – you’ll use all the income you generate from this product for advertising.

Product 2 – will be your profit.

Product 3 – you’ll reinvest half of that back into advertising.

Real world examples –

We’ll pretend for a moment that you’re a Math tutor, you tutor high-school Math.

Product 1 – ($79) How to survive Freshman Algebra – you want this product to be available during the first part of a student’s high school career. They can see how great you are at teaching Math, and they’ll want to buy your second product (and / or 3rd).

Product 2 – ($199) How to Make a 30+ on the Math Part of the ACT.

Product 3 – ($29 / month) includes Product 2, given to the student in bite size chunks and every weekend say Saturday Mornings and Sunday afternoons you provide them with an hour long ‘class’ and then practice questions, grading, and explaining how you got the answers.

Let’s run some numbers.

We’ll pretend you get 2% of the people who click on an add to buy Product 1. Each clicks costs you $1.00.

Five percent of the people that buy Product 1 buy Product 2, 5 percent buy product 3.

So if you get 1000 clicks, how much money have you made?

1000 clicks = $1000
2% of 1000 = 20 x $79 = $1580.00
5% of 20 = 1
$199
$29 / month

Total profit – $808.
Now imagine if that was for a month and you did that every month for a year. By the way the numbers I used there are very realistic.

Follow us / more information.

You can find much more information on our blog. Just use the search box and type something in, you may be surprised at what you find.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/

or find us on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Clever-Apple-Tutoring-Business-Help/186004714761452?ref=hl

Thinking about Next Year for your Business

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I apologize this is late, after writing it, I realized I couldn’t log into my account to send it. Friday we brought my Dad back home to a rehab facility. Oh well, better late than never and I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

This issue will probably be different than our ‘normal’ ones, I’m in the hospital room with my Dad, so if things aren’t the same as our usual newsletter, that’s why.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, I did, ate way too much turkey. We wrote a blog post about thanking your customers, if you didn’t get a chance to read it, you can find it here.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/dont-forget-to-thank-your-customers-four-ways-to-do-it/

Our next issue will be on December 18th, it will be a highlight of some of my favorite posts from the last year.

I know I keep reminding you and it probably sounds like a broken record, but now it the time to figure out when your students will be gone during their Christmas vacation. One thing I’ve done in the past is to go to once a week tutoring, during the break. That way they don’t forget everything, but still gives you a break as well.

Another reminder, start working on getting your taxes done, that way you’ll be able to know if you might want to spend a little extra before the first of the year, or not. If you made more than you thought you would, it will also give you a chance to budget, so that you’ll be able to pay your taxes when they are due in April.

Thinking about Next Year

The end of the year is a great time to make new goals and to review how you’ve done in the past for your goals. We’ve talked about this before.

Your goal should be specific (number) of what you want to accomplish, and the date you want to accomplish it by.

An example would be – I want to have ten new students by the end of the year. From that goal I always like to break things down a bit, so for the goal we mentioned above, if you brought a new student in each month, you would meet and surpass your goal.

Make sure that you set a realistic goal. Easier said than done, you want a goal that will make you work hard, but you’ll also want a goal that you would never achieve no matter how hard you work. After you’ve set your goal it is important to break it down into smaller bits – even smaller than we talked about above. So for the ten new customers. We’ve been in business for a while, and have found out that we need to talk to about ten people before we get a new client, so we could break down our goal into the number of people we needed to talk to. You could also break it down some more, how much advertising do you have to do in order for ten people to talk to. Advertising is an interesting thing and normally will work about the same over time.

I know this issue is brief, but I hope you got some good out of it and will work on making some goals for your business. My dad always told me “reach for the stars, you may not get one, but you want come up with an handful of mud either.”

Next issue is the 18th and we’ll have some year end discounts.

Ideas for the Holidays

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News – My dad is doing some better. He is still in the Trauma ICU but should be transferred out of there in a day or two. We have a long road of physical therapy etc., but we are thankful that he is still with us. Today we’re going to talk some about some things you can do to earn some more money around the holidays.

Next issue will be Dec. 4th and Dec. 18th.

The holidays are approaching both Thanksgiving and Christmas, we have some tips for you to both earn some extra cash as well as make sure you’re earning what you should be from your current clients.

  1. Find out when your students will be out of town. This holds true for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you still owe them tutor sessions make sure you have them scheduled so you’ll be able to get paid. Normally schools have several days off before and after the holiday – more Christmas than Thanksgiving but many schools also allow students to be off on Weds. Make sure you talk with each of your students early, fill the spots as you speak with them, but also ask if they’re flexible and if they are get the date for their second choice.
  2. Semester exams and papers will be due soon. Think about providing your students with any extra help they may need. I’ve found that if you do this on the weekends then you want disrupt your normal schedule. You should of course know when your students have finals as well as papers and you also know which students may need a little extra help.
  3. During holidays – many parents still need to work. Now might be a great time to think about putting on a workshop that would last all day(s) while the parents are at work. These could be something fun, like a creative writing workshop, or work – like a ACT / SAT workshop or something in between (my favorite).
  4. Some tutors take the holiday off, if you’re one of those why not think about improving your tutor business (build a website / improve your social media presence).
  5. The end of the year is also a great time to think about goals and where you want your tutor business to head in the future. http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/setting-goals-and-a-discount/
    http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/long-range-plans-and-goals-for-your-tutor-business/

 

Follow us / more information.

You can find much more information on our blog. Just use the search box and type something in, you may be surprised at what you find.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/

or find us on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Clever-Apple-Tutoring-Business-Help/186004714761452?ref=hl

Help… I have too many tutor students

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school-busWe have had flash flooding over the past few days, so this issue is going to be a little short. I apologize for that, we weren’t affected but some friends and neighbors were, and if you’re like me then you help where you can. We’re also supposed to have some more rounds for the next several days, so I think I may buy a boat.

I have too many students –

We received a question this past week from one of our subscribers. She has too many students (she works alone) and asked for some help. I asked her a bit more about her business and then gave her an answer (one note, we love questions :-]) Here are some tips in case you run into the same problem.

Let’s pretend It’s my business and I tutor Math, five nights a week, from 4pm till 9pm. I tutor each student for 55 minutes, so I have a total of 25 tutor sessions. The tutor sessions average $20 since I offer discounts when people pay in advance. So from my sessions I earn about $500 a week.

First we want to make sure that people are committed to be a customer before I change things. I ask them to put a small deposit down $50, and offer them the next available tutor sessions.

When I have a couple of people that have paid the deposit, or if I begin to get tired of telling people we’re full, then I start looking for tutors. The best place to look as at the school your tutoring. I tutor Math, so I speak with the Math instructors ask them about any exceptional math students they may want to earn some extra money. I decide that I will be doing Pre-Cal and Calculus and they will be responsible for Algebra. I need a list of three or four people to ‘interview / speak’ with.

I call them and ask if they would be interested in tutoring for me a couple of nights / every day of the week. They would earn $100 / week for 10 hours of work. You may have to speak with a couple of people before you find some takers, then you interview them and then ask them to pretend to help you with a math problem. Chose the best candidate, offer them the job, tell the others you interview / ask them if it is ok if you contact them if another position becomes available. File their contact information away.

If you don’t find any good candidates from high-school then speak with the local college (again I like to speak with the Math professor), they normally don’t mind to make an announcement in class.

Here are some more places you can find tutors. Ask your kids, they probably know someone that is ‘smart’ in almost any subject, put an ad up at the local college, the student center is another good place to look.

Announce it on your face book pages and other social media sites.

Let’s pretend that my tutor business continued to grow and now we have two sessions running five nights a week 4-9. So we’re making $1000 a week and paying $250.00. And that continues on.

There are a few other ways to get some more sessions in, although I’ve found that hiring someone works out better.

  1. Group people together – this works for certain subjects, but not for all.
  2. Have additional sessions on the weekends.
  3. Make the sessions shorter, tutor later or begin earlier.

I hope you have a wonderful week.

Useful URLs – I didn’t talk about taxes and how to setup your accounting for employees because I’m not an accountant, but you can find some information about employees from the IRS website. http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Independent-Contractor-Self-Employed-or-Employee

Quote – The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

Follow us / more information.

You can find much more information on our blog. Just use the search box and type something in, you may be surprised at what you find.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/

or find us on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Clever-Apple-Tutoring-Business-Help/186004714761452?ref=hl

Unique Advertising Methods for your Tutor Business

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I know I said that the next issue would be the first week in August, but I wanted to share a couple of things with you.

We want to welcome our new subscribers and the folks that have recently purchased one of our tutor guides.

We have a couple of new specials on our website, you can find details for both of them here.

http://www.cleverapple.com/special.html

I would like to encourage you to join us in the free Q and A Webinar that is coming up in August. If you would like to send us a question, you can just send a note to info@cleverapple.com.

Some Quick Local Business promotion ideas

I took a road trip a couple of weeks ago with my wife and daughter. It was my daughter’s last Ortho appointment and we wanted to get some shopping in too. I can’t believe that Haley is going to be a senior this year.

We stopped at a restaurant one day; they had a bulletin board just outside of the rest room. I have mentioned before about using a flyer and how that it could help you grow your tutor business, but I had never seen it in action before. We sat so I could watch as people waited to use the restroom and then they would of course look at the flyers that folks had left there.

I had checked it out and there were flyers for lawn care, windows, house cleaning, but no tutors. I actually think that would have been a great place to put one. As I watched people I noticed something, more people were taking pictures of the ad, than were pulling off the tear off with the phone number on it.

Here are some additional tips for doing tear away sheets – they still work and maybe even better now.

  1. Make your Flyer colorful, but make sure that your business name, telephone number, and website are big – so that if people do take a picture of your ad, they’ll be able to see it clearly. Test it out using your own cell phone.
  2. Only one of the ads on the wall included a coupon. Make sure to include one with your flyer. It will not only bring more customers, but will help you track the ad. We’ve talking about tracking before, so I won’t talk about it again.
  3. Remember to be specific about what you tutor, the age groups of who you tutor.
  4. One of the ads had a QR code – you know those box things that don’t look like anything. In the Useful URLs section you’ll find some tips on how to make one of your own.
  5. Make sure that you check on your ad at least once a week – and if all of your phone numbers have been torn off, every time you visit then you may want to go more often.
  6. Remember to track each location you have a flyer. Try new places, remove your flyer from places that don’t perform well. Get to know the owner of the establishment, tell them what you do, you’ll be surprised how often they hear of someone that may need just the service that you’re offering.

 

Useful URLs – All about QR codes – http://www.qrstuff.com/

Quote – I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale

Follow us / more information.

You can find much more information on our blog. Just use the search box and type something in, you may be surprised at what you find.

http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/

or find us on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Clever-Apple-Tutoring-Business-Help/186004714761452?ref=hl